I have the same email address that I've had since 1994 (basically firstname@lastname.com). Unfortunately I used it on the Usenet many years ago, before this was considered to be a bad idea. Nowadays, Google Groups (and perhaps others?) have my postings, and email address, forever immortalized.
I imagine that harvesting software would crawl Google groups regularly. Is there anything I can do about this? This study makes it clear that after an email address is removed from the web, the amount of spam it receives drops off dramatically. It makes sense that removing my email address from google groups (the last remaining place it exists on the web) could help substantially.
So the question is, will Google remove my email address from their site if I ask them? Has anybody else tried this?
I agree, and admittedly that was my primary motivation when I enrolled!:) I'd like to think I'm happier and more enlightened (albeit with moderate income) now though.:)
I went to the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. This is one of Microsoft's favourite schools to recruite from, because of the co-op program and because the students are easily moldable. I knew a lot of classmates that went to work at Microsoft for internships and full-time work. After all was said and done, most agreed that Microsoft was exactly as you stated--it's filled with young geeks who don't know what they're missing (and are easily wooed by gadgets), and a bunch of older geeks with no social lives that never leave the Microsoft Campus. They also woo the younger ones by giving them titles like "Project Manager" to make them feel important.
One of my female friends who worked there came back with some real horror stories: the older men there are so desperate they'll throw a tonne of money at any employee with breasts just for a chance at having a date. She said she would never go near that company again.
Is it any wonder where the Microsoft attitude of everything-must-be-Microsoft comes from? The vast majority of employees there never leave the campus and are fed the Microsoft party-line constantly. If you think the Apple "reality distortion field" is bad, try a day on the Microsoft campus.
Blech. At Waterloo we learned that only the pathetic people who were willing to give up their lives for money were the ones who interned at Microsoft. In case you haven't noticed, the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth.:)
Oh please? Could they? I don't even mind the obvious grammatical errors and false reporting so much. What I really hate is when a story is posted and the editor gets in his two cents with some bullshit comment. I wish that editors would just POST their comments as the first post instead of adding their comment to the story. This is particularly problematic when the editor ads someting wrong that contributes to the confusion about an issue. Plus if they had to comment like everybody else (albeit, first), we could mod them down like they deserve!:)
If you're looking for a registrar with good morals, you can't beat OpenSRS. They have VERY strict policies against things like spamming, invalid whois and cyberquatting, and will never get in the way of you transferring your domain out of their system if you're not happy. If you'd like an OpenSRS reseller with good prices, check out web.com who sell domains for $8.99US. If you'd like to check out some others, check out the (randomly generated) OpenSRS referral list.
These days *anyone* can become a registrar, it seems.
Yes. That's what "deregulation" means.
they're just putting out a couple of thousand bucks to become registrars themselves then they get to snap up as many newly-expired domain names as they want, for free.
Actually, no. An ICANN accredited registrar pays the ICANN fees as you mentioned, but does not get names for free. Each domain name comes at a cost of approximately $6US (for COM/NET/ORG). I know this because I work at an ICANN accredited registrar. It's cheap for the cybersquatters, but not free.
Also, we'd better warn Metrowerks to stop charging for CodeWarrior, after all, CodeWarrior is useless unless you actually make an application with it!
This is a flawed analogy and would only be appropriate if CodeWarrior applications required CodeWarrior to run. If Konfabulator widgets could run without Konfabulator, then it would be worth investigating.
As it stands now, who would waste their time making widgets just so that the Konfabulator guys can make more money? Bah. I'll stick with Cocoa, thanks.
Why does Fink install itself in/sw? This is not the place for 3rd-party add-ons. It's completely non-standard and confusing.
Fink should install itself into/usr/local/fink. Why doesn't it? And please do not point me towards the Fink FAQ--this only refers to installing in/usr/local (fine, a bad idea), but neverthelss,/sw should not be the alternative./usr/local/fink with directories like/usr/local/fink/bin and/usr/local/fink/lib would be a considerably more Unix-consistent place to put these files.
The directory/sw is a particularly bad name too, as nowhere in the name does it associate itself with fink--i.e., the software that put the directory there. plus, if I have/usr on a separate partition for all user-installed software, I want the fink stuff to go there too!
I believe that what you're saying is true, but you're forgetting one important thing: people buy on features, not "smoother design, better ease of use, more speed, and more stability." I have done a lot of reasearch in this topic, and read a lot of market research data. The results are quite conclusive: the vast majority of users believe that speed and stability (bugfixes) should be free. While "better ease of use" and "smoother design" are things that some customers are willing to pay for, most decide to make a jump in version almost entirely based on new features.
Unfortunatley, this is the way it is right now. People may want a more easy-to-use program that's more stable, but they don't know it (or, at least, aren't willing to pay for it). So what's the solution? If people are only willing to buy on features, where's the incentive to spend development time on bugfixes and usability? If people truly want this, they're going to have to vote with their pocketbooks.
People have been waiting for the "G5" for a very long time, and there's no solid indicator that this chip will be available in 2003. There is also no solid indicator that it will hit 2Ghz at the introduction. I haven't even heard anything about a "900Mhz bus" myself. There are still a lot of unanswered questions around the "G5."
Regardless of the rumours, there will always be a faster computer around the corner. My advice is to buy what you need when you need it. Any new towers will be at least six to eight months off at this point.
Wow. They actually seem to use GeoTrust certificates too, which are trusted by IE and Mozilla! These are obviously basic certificates, but they're sufficient for most people. Thanks for the link!
What build of Chimera are you using? From my experience, the "released" build of Chimera is slightly slower than Safari, but any monthly from the last few months is considerably faster than Safari. There's no doubt that the latest nightly build of Chimera is far superior to Safari in every way. I really hope the developers don't drop is, as Chimera is on a roll!
These systems have everything going for them in terms of speed EXCEPT the processors. A two-processor system should go like a bat out of hell, but the current crop matches, not excels, in speed tests with single-processor Macs of a comparable speed. The processors are bottlenecked. These new desktops were designed with faster or more efficient processors in mind, and they didn't come.
Well, I think the dual-processor bottleneck is more of an issue with the poor system controllers and DDR implementation on the current PowerMacs. The processor is definitely the biggest problem, but, speaking as somebody who used to work at a semiconductor company that made system controllers and 'northbridge' chips, I can tell you that Apple's system controllers leave something to be desired. It's not all Motorolla's fault.
There have been a slew of comments about the topic of new Motorola processors and Apple's DDR/controller implementation at Ars Technica if you're interested.
We're not buying them because there's nothing compelling. An eMac is nice, but it's an all-in-one. This may work well for a school, but everybody around here realizes that monitors almost always out-live just about every other component. The iBook is a great laptop (and the 12" PowerBook is an excellent option for those that want a G4), but not everybody wants a laptop.
The type of people who read slashdot have different requirements than most computer users. I'd be willing to bet that what most people here want is an eMac at a similar cost-effective price-point without the monitor, or a G4 with a decent processor. I've personally decided to get a G4 upgrade for my B&W G3 because there's simply nothing worthwhile coming out of Apple that isn't a laptop.
Need some numbers? How about these: (Stolen from Nevyn in this thread at Ars).
PowerMac (tower) Sales: Q1 2003: 158,000 units Q4 2002: 176,000 units Q3 2002: 169,000 units Q1 2002: 212,000 units
That's a staggering downward trend that proves what we all know -- when it comes to anything besides laptops, Apple can't deliver.
You're kidding, right? Please tell me this is sarcasm.
If you aren't kidding, sure, maybe you wanted to learn it for "fun," but you are a big geek (not an insult, just a fact). Most people do not want to have to (weeeeeeeee) fiddle around for ages to figure out how to use their new organizer.
The Palm didn't succeed because of Grafitti, it succeeded in spite of it. It was cheap, small, with a simple interface (Grafitti notwithstanding). The Newton is still far superior in just about every way, it just wasn't as marketable at the time.
I have a similar requirement, in that I would like to throttle a connection on a per-server basis (on OpenBSD most likely). i.e. I would like to allow 192.168.1.2 100kb/s and 192.168.1.3 50kb/s. Is this possible? How would it be done?
I agree. All of my websites are in Salt-Lake City, Utah and I live in Toronto, Ontario. Besides the fact that I'm in a different country than my web host, it's also nearly 4,000km away. Though I would imagine they've thought of this situation, and while they probably default, there must be a way to tweak the results.
Having to pay $49 to get iDVD3 (even though other iApps come along they are also freely available) is rediculous.
I'm not really sure how you think this is "ridiculous." iDVD was always a for-pay program. From my understanding this is because Apple uses 3rd-party code and technology, and therefor needs to pay a licensing fee for every copy of iDVD that is shipped.
Even if this isn't true, $49 is nothing for a program with the power of iDVD. iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, iCal and iSync are all free. How can you seriously complain about this?
Well, Tucows seems to be doing quite well (especially in their last three quarters). They have diversified into other businesses, but their primary income is still related to domain name registration.
Chimera has Command-{ and Command-} to switch to previous and next tab respectively. Not much help if you don't run Mac OS X, but why not submit a feature request to bugzilla?
While Apple's "Megahertz Myth" material may be a little overboard at times, when it comes to laptops, it's pretty close. Remember that your "Pentium IV" laptop is actually using a "Pentium IV-M" processor. That a mobile Pentium, which has been butchered to make it less power-hungry. This affect performance. Another very important consideration is that when unplugged, most Pentium laptops run at as little as 1/2 or even 1/3rd the rated clockspeed! This, again, is to save power. This can be turned off, but it severely sacrifices battery life.
By comparison, the G4 in a Titanium is the same G4 that's in the desktops, and it runs at full clockspeed all the time, unless you set it to do otherwise. The fact is, a G4 Titanium will cleanly whip the fastest Mobile Pentium chips out there. Laptops are the one market where Apple is not lagging behind.
There's lots of reasons to add a keypad to a handheld device, and the "bloat" is hardly more than the writing area of a standard palm handheld. First of all, it's much faster to type than to use the braindead "grafitti" of Palm handhelds (hint: use your thumbs). You can also enter text with one hand on a keyboard, whereas with a Palm you need one hand to hold it, and the other with which to write.
Of course you also need to realize that different people have different requirements. Beleive it or not, the world does not revolve around you. For you it's "pocket bloat," for me it's useability. The keyboard makes sense. Research in Motion was right all along. The new BlackBerries are much more useable than any Palm I've seen.
Fire is a decent IM client, but if one is using Mac OS X, I would strongly suggest using Proteus instead (which, for what it's worth, does support MSN).
I also wonder why you say just because somebody uses a Mac they probably don't need MSN. Unfortunately, MSN is used by SO many people these days that, at least for me, it's been practically impossible to know a large group of friends and not have a significant number of them only on MSN.
Just a nit-pick, but you might want to consider that this isn't a computer-science program we're talking about here. It's Electrical & Computer Engineering. That may make a difference.
I went through this program, and I remember those courses. They used to be taught in C++.
Slashdot Mirror
I have the same email address that I've had since 1994 (basically firstname@lastname.com). Unfortunately I used it on the Usenet many years ago, before this was considered to be a bad idea. Nowadays, Google Groups (and perhaps others?) have my postings, and email address, forever immortalized.
I imagine that harvesting software would crawl Google groups regularly. Is there anything I can do about this? This study makes it clear that after an email address is removed from the web, the amount of spam it receives drops off dramatically. It makes sense that removing my email address from google groups (the last remaining place it exists on the web) could help substantially.
So the question is, will Google remove my email address from their site if I ask them? Has anybody else tried this?
- j
I agree, and admittedly that was my primary motivation when I enrolled! :) I'd like to think I'm happier and more enlightened (albeit with moderate income) now though. :)
- j
Tell me about it.
:)
I went to the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. This is one of Microsoft's favourite schools to recruite from, because of the co-op program and because the students are easily moldable. I knew a lot of classmates that went to work at Microsoft for internships and full-time work. After all was said and done, most agreed that Microsoft was exactly as you stated--it's filled with young geeks who don't know what they're missing (and are easily wooed by gadgets), and a bunch of older geeks with no social lives that never leave the Microsoft Campus. They also woo the younger ones by giving them titles like "Project Manager" to make them feel important.
One of my female friends who worked there came back with some real horror stories: the older men there are so desperate they'll throw a tonne of money at any employee with breasts just for a chance at having a date. She said she would never go near that company again.
Is it any wonder where the Microsoft attitude of everything-must-be-Microsoft comes from? The vast majority of employees there never leave the campus and are fed the Microsoft party-line constantly. If you think the Apple "reality distortion field" is bad, try a day on the Microsoft campus.
Blech. At Waterloo we learned that only the pathetic people who were willing to give up their lives for money were the ones who interned at Microsoft. In case you haven't noticed, the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth.
- j
Less flippant editorializing by the staff
:)
Oh please? Could they? I don't even mind the obvious grammatical errors and false reporting so much. What I really hate is when a story is posted and the editor gets in his two cents with some bullshit comment. I wish that editors would just POST their comments as the first post instead of adding their comment to the story. This is particularly problematic when the editor ads someting wrong that contributes to the confusion about an issue. Plus if they had to comment like everybody else (albeit, first), we could mod them down like they deserve!
- j
If you're looking for a registrar with good morals, you can't beat OpenSRS. They have VERY strict policies against things like spamming, invalid whois and cyberquatting, and will never get in the way of you transferring your domain out of their system if you're not happy. If you'd like an OpenSRS reseller with good prices, check out web.com who sell domains for $8.99US. If you'd like to check out some others, check out the (randomly generated) OpenSRS referral list.
- j
These days *anyone* can become a registrar, it seems.
Yes. That's what "deregulation" means.
they're just putting out a couple of thousand bucks to become registrars themselves then they get to snap up as many newly-expired domain names as they want, for free.
Actually, no. An ICANN accredited registrar pays the ICANN fees as you mentioned, but does not get names for free. Each domain name comes at a cost of approximately $6US (for COM/NET/ORG). I know this because I work at an ICANN accredited registrar. It's cheap for the cybersquatters, but not free.
- j
Also, we'd better warn Metrowerks to stop charging for CodeWarrior, after all, CodeWarrior is useless unless you actually make an application with it!
This is a flawed analogy and would only be appropriate if CodeWarrior applications required CodeWarrior to run. If Konfabulator widgets could run without Konfabulator, then it would be worth investigating.
As it stands now, who would waste their time making widgets just so that the Konfabulator guys can make more money? Bah. I'll stick with Cocoa, thanks.
- j
Why does Fink install itself in /sw? This is not the place for 3rd-party add-ons. It's completely non-standard and confusing.
/usr/local/fink. Why doesn't it? And please do not point me towards the Fink FAQ--this only refers to installing in /usr/local (fine, a bad idea), but neverthelss, /sw should not be the alternative. /usr/local/fink with directories like /usr/local/fink/bin and /usr/local/fink/lib would be a considerably more Unix-consistent place to put these files.
/sw is a particularly bad name too, as nowhere in the name does it associate itself with fink--i.e., the software that put the directory there. plus, if I have /usr on a separate partition for all user-installed software, I want the fink stuff to go there too!
Fink should install itself into
The directory
- j
I believe that what you're saying is true, but you're forgetting one important thing: people buy on features, not "smoother design, better ease of use, more speed, and more stability." I have done a lot of reasearch in this topic, and read a lot of market research data. The results are quite conclusive: the vast majority of users believe that speed and stability (bugfixes) should be free. While "better ease of use" and "smoother design" are things that some customers are willing to pay for, most decide to make a jump in version almost entirely based on new features.
Unfortunatley, this is the way it is right now. People may want a more easy-to-use program that's more stable, but they don't know it (or, at least, aren't willing to pay for it). So what's the solution? If people are only willing to buy on features, where's the incentive to spend development time on bugfixes and usability? If people truly want this, they're going to have to vote with their pocketbooks.
- j
People have been waiting for the "G5" for a very long time, and there's no solid indicator that this chip will be available in 2003. There is also no solid indicator that it will hit 2Ghz at the introduction. I haven't even heard anything about a "900Mhz bus" myself. There are still a lot of unanswered questions around the "G5."
Regardless of the rumours, there will always be a faster computer around the corner. My advice is to buy what you need when you need it. Any new towers will be at least six to eight months off at this point.
- j
Wow. They actually seem to use GeoTrust certificates too, which are trusted by IE and Mozilla! These are obviously basic certificates, but they're sufficient for most people. Thanks for the link!
- j
What build of Chimera are you using? From my experience, the "released" build of Chimera is slightly slower than Safari, but any monthly from the last few months is considerably faster than Safari. There's no doubt that the latest nightly build of Chimera is far superior to Safari in every way. I really hope the developers don't drop is, as Chimera is on a roll!
- j
These systems have everything going for them in terms of speed EXCEPT the processors. A two-processor system should go like a bat out of hell, but the current crop matches, not excels, in speed tests with single-processor Macs of a comparable speed. The processors are bottlenecked. These new desktops were designed with faster or more efficient processors in mind, and they didn't come.
Well, I think the dual-processor bottleneck is more of an issue with the poor system controllers and DDR implementation on the current PowerMacs. The processor is definitely the biggest problem, but, speaking as somebody who used to work at a semiconductor company that made system controllers and 'northbridge' chips, I can tell you that Apple's system controllers leave something to be desired. It's not all Motorolla's fault.
There have been a slew of comments about the topic of new Motorola processors and Apple's DDR/controller implementation at Ars Technica if you're interested.
- j
We're not buying them because there's nothing compelling. An eMac is nice, but it's an all-in-one. This may work well for a school, but everybody around here realizes that monitors almost always out-live just about every other component. The iBook is a great laptop (and the 12" PowerBook is an excellent option for those that want a G4), but not everybody wants a laptop.
The type of people who read slashdot have different requirements than most computer users. I'd be willing to bet that what most people here want is an eMac at a similar cost-effective price-point without the monitor, or a G4 with a decent processor. I've personally decided to get a G4 upgrade for my B&W G3 because there's simply nothing worthwhile coming out of Apple that isn't a laptop.
Need some numbers? How about these:
(Stolen from Nevyn in this thread at Ars).
PowerMac (tower) Sales:
Q1 2003: 158,000 units
Q4 2002: 176,000 units
Q3 2002: 169,000 units
Q1 2002: 212,000 units
That's a staggering downward trend that proves what we all know -- when it comes to anything besides laptops, Apple can't deliver.
- j
You're kidding, right? Please tell me this is sarcasm.
If you aren't kidding, sure, maybe you wanted to learn it for "fun," but you are a big geek (not an insult, just a fact). Most people do not want to have to (weeeeeeeee) fiddle around for ages to figure out how to use their new organizer.
The Palm didn't succeed because of Grafitti, it succeeded in spite of it. It was cheap, small, with a simple interface (Grafitti notwithstanding). The Newton is still far superior in just about every way, it just wasn't as marketable at the time.
- j
I have a similar requirement, in that I would like to throttle a connection on a per-server basis (on OpenBSD most likely). i.e. I would like to allow 192.168.1.2 100kb/s and 192.168.1.3 50kb/s. Is this possible? How would it be done?
- j
I agree. All of my websites are in Salt-Lake City, Utah and I live in Toronto, Ontario. Besides the fact that I'm in a different country than my web host, it's also nearly 4,000km away. Though I would imagine they've thought of this situation, and while they probably default, there must be a way to tweak the results.
- j
Having to pay $49 to get iDVD3 (even though other iApps come along they are also freely available) is rediculous.
I'm not really sure how you think this is "ridiculous." iDVD was always a for-pay program. From my understanding this is because Apple uses 3rd-party code and technology, and therefor needs to pay a licensing fee for every copy of iDVD that is shipped.
Even if this isn't true, $49 is nothing for a program with the power of iDVD. iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, iCal and iSync are all free. How can you seriously complain about this?
- j
Well, Tucows seems to be doing quite well (especially in their last three quarters). They have diversified into other businesses, but their primary income is still related to domain name registration.
- j
Chimera has Command-{ and Command-} to switch to previous and next tab respectively. Not much help if you don't run Mac OS X, but why not submit a feature request to bugzilla?
- j
While Apple's "Megahertz Myth" material may be a little overboard at times, when it comes to laptops, it's pretty close. Remember that your "Pentium IV" laptop is actually using a "Pentium IV-M" processor. That a mobile Pentium, which has been butchered to make it less power-hungry. This affect performance. Another very important consideration is that when unplugged, most Pentium laptops run at as little as 1/2 or even 1/3rd the rated clockspeed! This, again, is to save power. This can be turned off, but it severely sacrifices battery life.
By comparison, the G4 in a Titanium is the same G4 that's in the desktops, and it runs at full clockspeed all the time, unless you set it to do otherwise. The fact is, a G4 Titanium will cleanly whip the fastest Mobile Pentium chips out there. Laptops are the one market where Apple is not lagging behind.
- j
There's lots of reasons to add a keypad to a handheld device, and the "bloat" is hardly more than the writing area of a standard palm handheld. First of all, it's much faster to type than to use the braindead "grafitti" of Palm handhelds (hint: use your thumbs). You can also enter text with one hand on a keyboard, whereas with a Palm you need one hand to hold it, and the other with which to write.
Of course you also need to realize that different people have different requirements. Beleive it or not, the world does not revolve around you. For you it's "pocket bloat," for me it's useability. The keyboard makes sense. Research in Motion was right all along. The new BlackBerries are much more useable than any Palm I've seen.
- j
Fire is a decent IM client, but if one is using Mac OS X, I would strongly suggest using Proteus instead (which, for what it's worth, does support MSN).
I also wonder why you say just because somebody uses a Mac they probably don't need MSN. Unfortunately, MSN is used by SO many people these days that, at least for me, it's been practically impossible to know a large group of friends and not have a significant number of them only on MSN.
- j
Just a nit-pick, but you might want to consider that this isn't a computer-science program we're talking about here. It's Electrical & Computer Engineering. That may make a difference.
I went through this program, and I remember those courses. They used to be taught in C++.
- j
This is no surprise. Shake announced that they were going to cancel Windows development even before Apple purchased them.